Laconic
by Nabob
Summary: Assorted Inuyasha 100 word ficlets. Latin. Laconicus, Spartan, from Greek Lakonikos, from Lakon, a Spartan from the reputation of the Spartans for brevity of speech.
1. Rage

_**Rage**_

It came in shades of red, in length of claws, fangs, and loss of reason.

Tinged in a bloody haze the world was once again a place of foreign voices, faces and smells.

Only blood made sense. Blood and killing. The innate instinct to shed and inflict imposed upon his crazed mind of unbalanced demon control.

Claws for slashing, fangs for ripping, eyes for relishing.

It was all he knew, in that deranged state of mind where nothing but the delight of slaying existed, where no sense of conscience could reach him and sway the urge for carnage.

Except...

"Osuwari!"


	2. Bereft

_**Bereft**_

In her arms, he is cold.

When once a scratch behind his ears would sound low rumbles, deep, down, in his chest, there is nothing. In his body, something has stopped beating.

When once he would lay his head upon her lap and sleep in a cocoon of nothing bliss, it now rests limp and heavy. In oblivion, his amber eyes have stopped waking.

When once in her embrace he was life, he now lies empty and far away. In her hold, he is absent, missing.

And Kagome holds Buyo to her breast, a trickle trailing sorrow down her cheek.


	3. Incorrigible

**_Incorrigible_**

**Word Count: **189

Oh look, he's doing it again.

He'll make his move any second now, I'm sure of it; he's just waiting for the right moment, waiting for me to glance away, avert my attention.

I know it.

Oh, he thinks he's so inconspicuous, so clever that I'd never see it coming. That's just like him, but I can see right through his guise. It's so transparent it is a wonder no one else has noticed it yet.

I cannot believe that the others have not observed it – can they not see the obviousness of his intentions creeping across his face? So secretive and yet so open at the same time, as if he wishes for the whole world to know what it is he aims to do.

But it is ambiguous, too, just like him. But then, it _is_ him, just another piece of him, like the one that he holds in his hand.

It crawls upon his face, just like the fingers that now crawl upon my –

"_Houshi-sama!_"

I slap the lecherous smile from his face – but just for an instant – because then it's back again. Incorrigible, just like him.


	4. Lost Anamnesis

_**Lost Anamnesis**_

**Word Count: **166

Today it is sunny, but inside Kohaku it is black and dark like the shard that pulses in his neck, tinting memories he does not remember as they float away.

Something drifts past him now, and he stops, turning his head.

There – he sees her – a strange kitten in her arms with too many tails.

'_She's very pretty,'_ Kohaku thinks.

And there – next to her – he sits, a boy, chains slipping through his hands, blade slicing pots into pieces.

'_He looks…almost like me!'_

"Hello!" he says.

They speak, but not to him.

Shy and quiet – that is the boy, the boy that looks like him – and soft, reassuring – that is the girl, almost woman.

"Kohaku, are you…scared?"

"N – not really…"

And aloud, Kohaku says, "Funny, we even have the same name!"

Later, she says, "You'll do fine," and pats the boy on the back, and for a second Kohaku almost thinks she means him.

But now they are gone, and Kohaku waves, shouting after them, "Goodbye!"


	5. Enumerate

_**Enumerate**_

**Word Count: **424

And another year rolls around, and she finds herself in front of the mirror this time, just like the last.

She takes stock, counting down one side and up the other, the numbers calculated inside her head, compared and added to those of last year, forming the new annual tally of the year's worries and wishes and wonders.

She counts them, bringing them before her mirror eyes to squint and appraise them, holding each one between her fingers.

For each strand that curls round her finger she recounts a worry, a fear, a stress – a _reason_, because inside each one is a hidden _something_ of herself, pieces that are now scattered upon her head in an unseen pattern that only time can see.

_One_, and she relates a part of herself that fell down a well, a part that fell and came back as a broken piece that still does not fill the former – a smile that does not stretch far enough to reach the corners. It is the same part of herself that does not live here anymore, but so many miles away, although sometimes returning to her world through a receiver that carries her voice.

_Two_, and that is the man that sits in a chair downstairs, a man who does not remember the broken piece but only the whole, a man who does not remember yesterday but remembers ten years ago, and a cat that is buried in the yard for whom he still buys food – cans that she empties into the garbage each night.

_Three,_ and that is someone from long, long ago, whom she misses most at night. He is someone that left too many years ago and could not come back, for all that little eyes had shed tears upon her lap to make it not so.

_Four_, and that is a boy who became a man too fast, who didn't wait for her to catch up and be ready to let him go. But sometimes, he also lets himself back in with the spare key or through the receiver that carries his voice.

_Five_, and that is where she stops this year, letting her counting fingers fall from her curls.

And for every grey hair on her head there lies another piece of herself that she has lost, but now she tucks those away for next year, when she'll remember and count and tally again.

In the mirror, she smiles, and in her head begins to count and tally the wrinkles on her face.

_One…_


	6. Internal Bleeding

_**Internal Bleeding**_

**Word Count: **189

The first time she stopped bleeding, she cried.

She cried a hole into which bled hope, a poisonous hope that found its way into her head where it took root and grew lies; grew lies that entangled themselves so deeply within her that she refused to see the absence of blood – of _real_ blood, that bled on the outside, not the inside, like the hope that ran poison through her veins.

And so she did not see that no blood blossomed on the sheets, no bright red bloomed between her thighs and trickled relief down her legs, no cycle came to seep safety into the bindings that remained clean and unwashed and tucked away.

And she waited in blindness, until a moon had come and gone, and then with it went her wishes and her optimism and her lies, and they slowly drained away, until they had faded from her completely and left her sightless.

But then in the darkness she felt a something that lit inside her, a something-else that grew and glowed through her.

And this time a new hope came and bled sight back within her.


	7. Cognizance

_**Cognizance**_

**Word Count: **196

She points to the dead girl, shaking. "Do you know who she is?"

The part of me that I'm trying to remember says yes, says also to curl at her side and die too, says to clean her face with my tears and then to cradle her in my arms and never _ever_ let her go, but all I can see is her blood, and all I can remember is no.

She waits, unaware of the fact that she's keening, and I stare at her, silent, that part of me wanting to say yes so badly that it hurts, but the only answer is an old pain that throbs in the back of my neck.

"Who are you?" I say instead.

She glances at the dead girl, and trembles, looking horribly afraid.

"I'm…I'm your…" she falters, gripping the tiny stone in her hands. She looks at the dead girl, her eyes closed. She weeps. "…I'm your sister."

A window inside me opens, sunlight rushing in.

"_Aneue?_"

The pain in my neck throbs harder, but her hug is so fierce, and her tears are so hot, and I want so badly to believe that this is real.


	8. Puppet Without Strings

_**Puppet Without Strings**_

**Word Count:** 199

There is something unreal about him, something the cricket tries to whisper in his ear, but he does not understand.

The uncanny feeling he gets – of being jostled inside the body that he thinks is his but really isn't – is only natural; it must be. But he's walking in his skin, held in only by the seams Gepetto stitches, down this side and up the other, holding back his memories with tangled threads that he does not even try to unravel. He thinks he is a real boy, and that's all that matters.

That he's just a puppet with no strings, never fretting or frowning and certainly never caring, he doesn't know. He might wonder why, but then Gepetto says _but you are a real boy_, and he always believes him, because he _is_ a real boy, and the feeling of strings attached is only an illusion.

But then he sits and thinks, remembering a pretty girl – the Blue Fairy, perhaps – who keeps slipping through the seams Gepetto stitches, a girl he is so sure he knows – or knew, but then she is gone, Gepetto's strings tugging tighter.

And even though she tries, the Blue Fairy cannot make Pinocchio real.


	9. Time is Money

**_Time is Money_**

**Word Count: **140

The whore is as dirty as the money that buys her; a filthy wench that feels as slick as the greed that has them writhing on the floor like snakes shedding skin.

Not wanting to care, he knows it's his greed, his want, that burns away the hole in his hand, that fills his mind with crude pleasure until it breaks, and he feels the oily shame settle like beads of sweat on his skin.

He shoves her from himself, watching her small eyes stare at him in the darkness, and suddenly cold, he reaches for his robes, messy and tangled like the woman's hair. He wraps himself in their folds, shivering, and standing he stumbles across the room, feeling heavy and disoriented, until he finds the clinking bag of coins.

He throws them at her feet, and she flees.


	10. Empty House Full of Doors

**_Empty House Full of Doors_**

**Word Count: **187

She wakes up thinking it is yesterday, but later when she opens up _Wednesday_ and finds it empty and already gone, she pauses; her fingers wavering and waiting. But then she is closing yesterday and swallowing today, already too used to opening doors that lead to nothing – her house is so full of them.

But walking past another door she hears the hinges creak and groan, and in the corners of her eyes she sees it swinging back and forth, back and forth, squeaking on its rusty hinges, old and tarnished just like her own. It swings wide for a moment, inviting her in, before it slams shut in its frame, locking her out.

And through a different door walks a grown-up man who looks like a little boy, the room behind his unused door empty and bare, even though whenever he says "Mama" she always thinks he means her. But then she remembers that she has forgotten, the decrepit dry well having eaten all the bones of memory that have fallen in, the only thing in her empty house that ever seems full.


	11. Misplaced Thread

_**Misplaced Thread**_

**Word Count: **200

At the end of the century, he feels old.

It's not as new a feeling as he expected it would be; it has not snuck up and surprised him as he always believed it would. No, instead it has seated itself down beside him and wrapped a friendly arm about his shoulders, like an old friend.

This he cannot fathom, for he has always walked beside time and not with it, but Sesshoumaru feels his age pulling him down into a time he cannot grasp, a world he thinks must be alien.

Perhaps it is because he has sat with longevity for so long, that he once mistook it for eternity, and thought to wait forever. But so many lives he has seen through the corners of his eyes, seen spun and unraveled by time, that it – or she – must have slipped past him among the many threads. Something tells him that his thread should have been cut long ago.

And for once in his life he is almost frightened, almost afraid of missing her, never catching her, as he watches the time whirl by faster and faster, leaving him alone and misplaced on the thread that time keeps spinning.


	12. At the End of the Line

**_At the End of the Line_**

**Word Count: **398

He's standing at the very end of the line and his foot is tapping with impatience that sets the usual patient look of an old, wrinkled man apart from him. Although, of course, he would never view himself as _that_ type of old. He is, after all, a worldly scholar.

But, the line, to his eyes, is as unmovable as a frozen river, locked in place and leaving him at the very end of it.

To him, that's very unfair.

He's old, and that in itself should give him the right to fast-moving tills and not this…constant _standing_ and _waiting_. Especially for his poor, tired and aching feet. (Despite not being old_ old_, he is still susceptible to a few aches and pains…every now and again.)

Even if he is a patient man – which, of course, he is – the constant tedium of the beeping of the scanner and the murmuring and bustling of the others around him begins to almost annoy him, as the rhythm his foot taps on the floor indicates the impatience that is beginning to stir within him.

The basket is growing most definitely heavier in his arm, and did the shrill voice of the woman in front of him just become _shriller?_ He thinks so.

However, patience is a virtue, and with as much time as he has secured behind him in a long line of memories, the long line and boredom of its almost-stillness nearly doesn't bother him.

He never thinks he has waited as long as he really has, but it's been so long that when he reaches the checkout, he feels his age descending like fog down on his bent and weary frame.

He doesn't mind it, though, not really. The waiting always passes, eventually, and now here he is, carrying the groceries up the stairs and through the doorway, his old voice familiar and comforting in the almost-silence he enters.

It's not long now, he thinks half-consciously as he walks into the kitchen, the sweet-not-quite-sad smile of the woman there greeting him as usual.

If the choice were put to him, he would never speed it up, even though he might complain if he is still stuck waiting.

Because, even in a long line of noisy, shrill people, life has never lost its intricacy.

And even a trip to the grocery store means one more story for him to tell.


	13. In the Twentieth Century

_**In the Twentieth Century**_

**Word Count:** 420

In the 1920's he doesn't feel like he fits in very well.

Everyone seems to be drinking and smoking and staying out late to do more drinking and smoking, which confuses Sesshoumaru, but then, humans always were a little different, and he thinks he can let it slide.

Sometimes he dresses up in a hat and suit, just to see what it feels like, and goes out to drink tea in public wondering if he makes an impact now as good as he did before. Unfortunately, he always ends up blending into the corner, away from the laughing and the hostesses and the drinking.

People will look up and sometimes even stare, taking in his clean-cut face and ironed clothing, his neat and meticulous appearance – but then of course they look away. This is, after all, still Japan.

He gets bored too easily though, and in England he realizes that their tea is not to his liking and most strange, almost as strange as he finds these pale people themselves.

If he found his native land getting too rowdy for his tastes, Europe is much, much worse.

For the sake of appearances, and also curiosity, which he doesn't actually admit to, he goes out and walks around town, window shopping. He ends up at the park, and stays there briefly, confounded by a group of boys knocking a ball about with strange wooden clubs. The miniature arches they have set up all over the grass bemuse him even more.

A decade passes and he finds himself stuck in a life of luxury he wasn't aware of before, while the world around him collapses into poverty and ruin. He always knew humans were weak and undependable.

It takes him a while, but eventually he returns home, and after so much shock in France, he sees that very little has changed, and that _sake_ really is what he prefers.

But when this odd stage ends over on the other side of the globe, and another begins, bringing with it loud men and louder guns, Sesshoumaru is irked to find his country has been dragged into foreign business once again.

It lasts longer than he ever thought it would, or _should_ for that matter, but what does he care, anyway.

The sudden and unexpected explosion of heat and death is many miles away from him, but standing on the hillside days later, again doing something out of curiosity, for the first time in his life, Sesshoumaru feels he has underestimated the human race.


	14. Ignorance Isn't Always Bliss

_**Ignorance Isn't Always Bliss**_

The answer came, unexpectedly, and spun his thoughts around like a top, flinging out another question in his surprise. Blinking, he leaned forward to stare into her eyes. She wasn't crazy, was she?

"Of course," she answered, appearing confused. "Why?"

Shrugging, he pulled his mouth into a smile. "No…reason."

Cocking her head to the side, she appraised him briefly, as if she was uncertain of _his_ state of mind. He was beginning to think this was not quite the best start to a relationship.

"A moment, please, young maiden," he said, clasping her hands in his and kissing them. Winking, he turned away and quickly caught the arm of the _hanyou_ stalking by, who was looking unusually annoyed. Miroku couldn't possibly think of why.

"Help me," he muttered, gripping his comrade near the elbow.

"Oi!" Inuyasha complained, before he removed the monk's hand none too gently. "What do you need _help_, for? You got what you wanted, didn't you?"

Miroku shook his head. "You don't understand, Inuyasha. I…" He looked over his shoulder and back. "Surely you and…Kikyou, did…'experiment' at least –"

"_What!_"

Licking his lips and letting slip a little of his composure, he leaned closer to Inuyasha, which was closer than the latter would have liked. "Inuyasha," he hissed, "I'm asking you for _advice_."

Inuyasha stared at him.

"I'm a _virgin!_"


End file.
